The whole act was a hoax, of course. An elaborate illusion achieved through the use of invisible wires, electricity, and jets of air. And Professor Schweitzer? According to Duchess, he was a Pole from Poughkeepsie who hadn’t enough mastery over telekinesis to drop a hammer on his own foot.
No, thought Emmett with a touch of bitterness, the Schweitzers of this world were in no position to move objects with a glance or a wave of the hand. That power was reserved for the Parkers.
In all probability, no one had ever told Parker that he had the power of telekinesis; but they hadn’t needed to. He had learned it through experience, starting from the days of his childhood, when he would demand a toy that was in the window of a shop or an ice cream from a vendor in the park. Experience had taught him that if he wanted something badly enough, it would eventually be delivered into his hands, even if in defiance of the laws of gravity. With what but disdain can one look upon a man who in possession of this extraordinary power uses it to retrieve the remnants of a bottle of gin from across a room without having to get up from his chair?
But even as Emmett was having this thought, there was a delicate whirring and the handless clock began to chime. Glancing at Billy’s watch, Emmett saw with a flash of anxiety that it was already nine. He had completely underestimated how much time had passed. The train could be under way at any moment.
As Emmett reached for the pillowcase at his feet, Parker shifted his gaze.
—You’re not leaving?
—I need to get back to the engine.
—But we were just getting to know one another. Surely there’s no rush. Here, have a seat.
Reaching over, Parker pulled the empty armchair closer to his own, effectively blocking Emmett’s path to the door.
In the distance Emmett heard a hiss of steam as the brakes were released and the train began to move. Shoving the empty chair aside, Emmett took a step toward the door.
—Wait! Parker shouted.
Placing his hands on the arms of his chair, he hoisted himself up. Once Parker was standing, Emmett realized he was even larger than he’d seemed. With his head nearly hitting the ceiling of the car, he swayed in place for a moment, then lurched forward with his hands extended, as if he intended to grab Emmett by the shirt.
Emmett felt a surge of adrenaline and the sickening sensation that time was replaying itself for ill. A few feet behind Parker was the coffee table with the empty glasses and the overturned champagne bottle. Given the unsteadiness of Parker’s stance, Emmett knew without even thinking that if he gave Parker a single push in the sternum, he could topple him like a tree. It was another opportunity presented by chance for Emmett to upend all of his plans for the future with the action of an instant.
But with surprising agility, Parker suddenly slipped a folded five-dollar bill into the pocket of Emmett’s shirt. Then he stepped back and fell into his chair.
—With the utmost gratitude, Parker called, as Emmett went out the door.
Gripping the pillowcase in one hand, Emmett scaled the ladder, moved quickly across the length of the boxcar’s roof, and leapt over the gap to the next car—just as he had earlier that morning.
Only now the train was moving, lurching lightly left and right, and it was gaining speed. Emmett guessed it was traveling at only twenty miles an hour, but he had felt the force of the oncoming air when he’d made the jump between the cars. If the train reached thirty miles an hour, he would need to be moving pretty fast to clear the gap; and if it reached forty, he wasn’t sure he would be able to clear the gap at all.
Emmett began to run.
He couldn’t remember how many boxcars he had crossed earlier that morning before reaching the Pullman. With a growing sense of urgency, he looked up to see if he could pinpoint the car with the open hatch. What he saw instead was that half a mile ahead, the train was curving over a bend in the tracks.
While it was the bend in the tracks that was fixed and the train that was moving, from Emmett’s vantage point it seemed like it was the bend that was in motion, making its way rapidly down the chain of boxcars, heading toward him inexorably, the way that slack moves along a length of a rope when one end has been whipped.
Emmett began to sprint as fast as he could in the hope of making it to the next boxcar before the curve arrived. But the curve came faster than he anticipated, passing under his feet just as he made the leap. With the boxcar swaying, Emmett landed unevenly and went hurtling forward such that a moment later he was splayed across the roof with one foot hanging off its edge.
Intent on not letting go of the pillowcase, Emmett scrambled to grab something, anything, with his free hand. Blindly, he caught hold of a metal lip and pulled himself toward the middle of the roof.